Add in larger planets, which have been found to be in wider orbits around its star, and the percentage of stars with planets goes up to 70 percent, according to the researchers.

Based on current ongoing observations from the Kepler mission, along with others using different detection techniques, it looks like practically all Sun-like stars have planets, according to the Harvard-Smithsonian team.

A second group of researchers, from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Hawaii at Manoa, found smaller exoplanets to be much more plentiful than larger ones in the star systems it observed. The analysis also confirmed that the frequency of planets increased as its size decreased, which team member Andrew Howard and the Kepler team reported last year.

Perhaps one percent of stars have planets the size of Jupiter, while 10 percent have planets the size of Neptune, according to the Berkeley/ Hawaii team. The group’s research also shows the exoplanets they observed, which were two or three times the diameter of Earth, are typically more like our solar system’s Uranus and Neptune, each of which has a rocky core surrounded by helium and hydrogen gases and, perhaps, water.

They suggest planets orbiting close to their stars may even be water worlds, with oceans hundreds of kilometers deep, surrounding a rocky core.

Although the planets between one to two times larger than Earth may not necessarily be habitable, the Berkeley/Hawaii team said those planets might be rocky and, if they’re located within what they call the “Goldilocks zone” –not too hot, not too cold, just right for liquid water– could support life.

The Harvard-Smithsonian researchers found that, except for the gas giants, the type of star didn’t really have much effect on the size of its planets, contradicting previous findings. Neptune-type planets, they said, can be found just as frequently orbiting around relatively cool stars, called red dwarfs, as they are around sun-like stars. The same is true for smaller worlds.

“Earths and super-Earths aren’t picky,” said Guillermo Torres of the Harvard-Smithsonian team. “We’re finding them in all kinds of neighborhoods.”

As more data is gathered, more planets in larger orbits will be revealed, according to the Harvard-Smithsonian researchers. They say when Kepler’s mission is extended, astronomers should be able to spot Earth-sized planets at greater distances, including those with Earth-like orbits within the habitable zone.

Planet mars arrived from deep in interstellar space as a projectile laden with organic matter (and water) to dislodge planets Neptune and Earth from their orbits, my research has indicated. Lets find out where Mars came from. The impact of Mars with earth is why living creatures evolved in a strange favorable orbit, with the religious coloration of the story

The current current orbits of Earth and Neptune become extraneous and unnatural, if we modify Bode’s algorithm to correctly accommodate Pluto and Mercury orbits, Alternatively earth’s orbit will become natural and legitimate, as we all would perhaps prefer, if we doctor the calculations to get incorrect results (semimajor axis) for Pluto and mercury

I BELIEVE THAT THE EXISTENCE OF OTHER EARTLIKE PLANETS AND THE
PROBABILITY OF HAVING PEOPLE THERE, SHOWS ME THAT DARWINS
THEORY IS FALSIFIED. I BELIEVE THAT HUMANS CAME FROM ANOTHER PLANET, AFTER ALL THERE ARE SUCH VARIETY OF US AND PHYSICALLY
SO DIFFERENT.

I ONLY WISH THAT NATIONS WOULD STOP MILITARY EXPENSES AND RATHER SPEND THE MONEY ON HUMAN HEALTH, WELL BEING AND
SPACE EXPLORATION.